No more breaking up with the world first.
On not looking back with regret at your un-done thing
Hi everyone!
First some news: starting with the next newsletter, I'll be moving it over to Substack.
There are a few reasons for this: I want all my writing to live together somewhere, vs. each email disappearing into the ether once it’s sent out. Substack makes it easier to share one’s work. It allows for fun, multimedia things like podcasts as part of newsletters. It enables writing to become an income source for me.
But the main reason I’m making this move is an emotional and energetic one: Substack is a platform for writers.
As a kid, “writer” was a key part of my identity, essentially from the day I could hold a pen. From ages eight to eighteen, it was a foregone conclusion that I would go to college, major in English, and become a writer—and not just because in the 90s, there were seven jobs to choose from. I did go to college and I did major in English, with a concentration in creative writing. My dream, my plan, was to write creative nonfiction: essays and memoir.
In the spring of my senior year, I applied to a very prestigious MFA program for grad school. Wrote all the material, got all the recommendations, did the whole extensive song and dance. And then, a couple of weeks later, I withdrew my application. I told everyone I’d decided I didn’t want to take on any more student debt. I could learn to write at the school of life, I said. If I was going to write creative nonfiction, I’d find a way to do it without an MFA.
None of this was untrue, exactly. I did already owe a lot of money for school, and I did question the wisdom of owing more. But the real reason I withdrew the application wasn’t about loans at all. I was afraid I wouldn’t get in. I was afraid to not be good enough at the thing that felt like the most me thing. And I was afraid of what I believed this rejection would mean about myself, my abilities, my worth.
So I bailed on grad school. And then, for the next twenty-five years, I held the following jobs: proofreader, ghostwriter, writer of marketing materials, writer of strategy presentations, writer of banner ads and newspaper ads and commercials, writer of greeting cards, writer of a book based on my co-author’s research, writer of maximum-length social posts, writer of random thoughts and ideas for The Internet.
(So much writing for Instagram that never left Instagram.)
These things are all real writing; I don’t mean to suggest they’re not. But I was always careful to make writing only PART of my job. Sure, I write, but I also do art! I do business! I do strategy! I run a company! More tellingly, I was never willing to own being a writer, because in my mind, this distinction came with a certain amount of pressure to be extraordinary—to have a world-changing talent, to be deemed worthy of literary prizes, to make a bestseller list.
Said another way: I believed that my success or failure as a writer—and even the identity of “writer”—was not mine to determine.